A simple treatment with chloroquine, a drug commonly used against malaria and known for over thirty years, has shown signs of effectiveness against the coronavirus, says Didier Raoult, director of the Mediterranean Infection Institute in Marseille. The professor relies on the results of a Chinese clinical study.
"We already knew that chloroquine was effective in vitro against this new coronavirus and the clinical evaluation made in China confirmed it", explains this renowned specialist in infectious diseases, commenting on the first publication on this clinical study of three Chinese researchers in the journal BioScience Trends.
"Ultimately, this infection is perhaps the simplest and cheapest to treat of all viral infections", adds the director of this hospital-university institute very involved in the detection of the new coronavirus in France.
The article published online on February 19 draws its results from a clinical trial conducted in more than ten Chinese hospitals (in Wuhan - epicenter of the epidemic -, Beijing and Shanghai in particular) to measure "the effectiveness of chloroquine on treatment of pneumonia associated with Covid-19 ”.
"The antiviral and anti-inflammatory capacities of chloroquine could play a role in its potential effectiveness in treating patients with pneumonia caused by Covid-19," says the article on the study carried out by professors at Qingdao hospital. .
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"This is extraordinary news, this treatment which costs nothing," insisted Professor Raoult, welcoming the work of Chinese researchers to find an effective drug, a preferred route rather than the search for a vaccine that could not anyway not be available for several months, he said.